[TV] Recommended: "The Great Hack" : Netflix documentary on the Cambridge Analytica Scandal

[marlowe]

Recommended: "The Great Hack" : Netflix documentary on the Cambridge Analytica Scandal

Just thought I'd recommend the Netflix documentary The Great Hack for those who might be interested but not aware of it. It's definitely worth a watch.

It's about the Cambridge Analytica scandal and how they were instrumental in successfully manipulating the US election and also the Brexit campaign, to name but two, by using data sourced from Facebook.

Much of the data was sourced from people who had answered an innocuous looking personal profile quiz which had been designed specifically to harvest information which could then be sold. From the information gathered swing voters from swing states and constituencies were then identified as potential "persuadables" who were then targeted with ads and newsfeeds personally tailored to manipulate their way of thinking and subsequent voting.

The documentary also reveals how voters were manipulated in other countries' elections such as Trinidad and Tobago where the manipulation tactics used by* Cambridge Analytica were actually quite sinister.

The Great Hack focuses on a former Cambridge Analytica employee and whistleblower called Brittany Kaiser. For some reason everytime her name was mentioned I couldn't help thinking about that other shadowy, string pulling figure from The Usual Suspects, Keyser Soze.

 

[middletoenail]

Agree, this is decent. If you like this you'll also like (although quite old) 'Citizenfour' - the Ed Snowdon doc.

 

[marlowe]

Agree, this is decent. If you like this you'll also like (although quite old) 'Citizenfour' - the Ed Snowdon doc.

I'll check it out

 

[marlowe]

It wasn't just Brittany Kaiser's name that made me think of a fictional character from a film, but all the time I watched her I couldn't help thinking how much she resembled Dustin from the Netflix series Stranger Things...

 

[Wrong-Direction]

It's very worrying indeed

Sent from my SM-A600FN using Tapatalk

 

[Change at Barnham]

I thought it was an incredible film documentary and it has left me feeling amazing respect for Carole Cadwalladr. What a women!
She deserves every type of journalistic award that comes her way.

I think the content of the film is very, very scary. It clearly shows how we as a society have been mugged and how it still is progressing both in the UK and USA.
It left me feeling pretty hopeless and I feel let down by our parliamentary and judicial system. How have we not been able to stop this illegal juggernaut?

 

[The Clamp]

Kaiser was definitely substance affected most of that film. A mess.

 

[dadams2k11]

Saw this a few weeks ago Just goes to prove that we are controlled and the world leaders are capable of anything. Hope it opens more peoples eyes about the corruption that is going on under our noses.

If there are capable of this then what else have they done?

 

[BadFish]

Watching it now. Terrifying really. What do we do?

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[Thunder Bolt]

I thought it was an incredible film documentary and it has left me feeling amazing respect for Carole Cadwalladr. What a women!
She deserves every type of journalistic award that comes her way.

I think the content of the film is very, very scary. It clearly shows how we as a society have been mugged and how it still is progressing both in the UK and USA.
It left me feeling pretty hopeless and I feel let down by our parliamentary and judicial system. How have we not been able to stop this illegal juggernaut?

Aaron Banks keeps threatening Carole with legal action, but doesn't follow it up. She's been subjected to horrendous abuse from some on Twitter for her determination to get to the truth.
An amazing woman.

 

[Baldseagull]

Watching it now. Terrifying really. What do we do?

Sent from my Redmi Note 7 using Tapatalk

Be aware, and realise that you are as susceptible as everyone else to having your buttons pushed.

 

[Baldseagull]

Just thought I'd recommend the Netflix documentary The Great Hack for those who might be interested but not aware of it. It's definitely worth a watch.

It's about the Cambridge Analytica scandal and how they were instrumental in successfully manipulating the US election and also the Brexit campaign, to name but two, by using data sourced from Facebook.

Much of the data was sourced from people who had answered an innocuous looking personal profile quiz which had been designed specifically to harvest information which could then be sold. From the information gathered swing voters from swing states and constituencies were then identified as potential "persuadables" who were then targeted with ads and newsfeeds personally tailored to manipulate their way of thinking and subsequent voting.

The documentary also reveals how voters were manipulated in other countries' elections such as Trinidad and Tobago where the manipulation tactics used by* Cambridge Analytica were actually quite sinister.

The Great Hack focuses on a former Cambridge Analytica employee and whistleblower called Brittany Kaiser. For some reason everytime her name was mentioned I couldn't help thinking about that other shadowy, string pulling figure from The Usual Suspects, Keyser Soze.

It was worse than that, via those people, they also harvested data on the friends on their lists that did not have their privacy settings screwed down.

 

[Machiavelli]

I thought it was an incredible film documentary and it has left me feeling amazing respect for Carole Cadwalladr. What a women!
She deserves every type of journalistic award that comes her way.

I think the content of the film is very, very scary. It clearly shows how we as a society have been mugged and how it still is progressing both in the UK and USA.
It left me feeling pretty hopeless and I feel let down by our parliamentary and judicial system. How have we not been able to stop this illegal juggernaut?

She’s won numerous journalistic awards now, and has also been subject to a litany of abuse from the likes of Aaron Banks and the ‘impartial’ Andrew Neil from the BBC.
Investigative journalism is now a dying breed but her attempt to revive it has been compelling

 

[trueblue]

Interesting. All the reviews I'd read/heard about this documentary had been negative. Must be a mass media conspiracy. I'll add it to my Watchlist... (which probably just means I should get round to seeing it in about 2030).

 

[The Tactician]

Magnificent but terrifying documentary. The revelations around what they did in Trinidad and Tobago were nothing short of jaw-dropping. Propaganda works folks, and we’ve been victims of it. “Brexit was the petri dish for Trump.”

 

[TSB]

Magnificent but terrifying documentary. The revelations around what they did in Trinidad and Tobago were nothing short of jaw-dropping. Propaganda works folks, and we’ve been victims of it. “Brexit was the petri dish for Trump.”

48.1% of us passed the "duped" test.

 

[Stumpy Tim]

I was a little disappointed to be honest. Firstly, the title is misleading as there was no hack - CA misused the data that they had permission to gather (though they should have deleted it). The documentary then focused on how the right wing took advantage, but actually they didn’t do anything illegal themselves - it was CA that did the illegal stuff.

I read somewhere that if the left wing had used that data in that way it would have been used a case study for data analysis, but as it’s the right wing it is painted as evil. As a left winger myself I agree with that.

The documentary should have focused less on who used the data, and more about the illegalities of CA

 

[The Tactician]

48.1% of us passed the "duped" test.

The documentary highlighted that the majority of the population on either side had very strong views either way - they were never going to come round to a different way of thinking no matter what you tried. But because the vote was so close, CA knew they only needed to identify a small portion of the populous who were undecided: They called them ‘The Persuadables’, found out what motivated them, caught their attention, and scared them. Then they bombarded them with targeted ads, enough to tip the scales.

 

[TSB]

The documentary highlighted that the majority of the population on either side had very strong views either way - they were never going to come round to a different way of thinking no matter what you tried. But because the vote was so close, CA knew they only needed to identify a small portion of the populous who were undecided: They called them ‘The Persuadables’, found out what motivated them, caught their attention, and scared them. Then they bombarded them with targeted ads, enough to tip the scales.

How deeply depressing.
'The Persuadables' sounds more like 'The Manipulatables'.
I shall check out the documentary as it sounds interesting, if depressing!

 

[beorhthelm]

Magnificent but terrifying documentary. The revelations around what they did in Trinidad and Tobago were nothing short of jaw-dropping. Propaganda works folks, and we’ve been victims of it. “Brexit was the petri dish for Trump.”

interesting oversight that the techniques originate with Obama's campaigns. like you say, propaganda works.

the effects of the CA on the Brexit vote have probably been significantly overstated. there is an opinion that it was a test bed, the amount of people targeted were no were near enough to sway the outcome.